


I'll Be There When You Hit The Ground

by easyonme



Category: U2
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2019-04-20 06:46:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14255259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/easyonme/pseuds/easyonme
Summary: One day you'll look back, and you'll see where you were held now by this love...Inspired bythis photo. Set in early 2015 in Eze. Bono POV. (Yes, I realize the photo and the timing of the story do not entirely coincide, but hey it's my universe so it's my rules!)





	I'll Be There When You Hit The Ground

A few years ago you'd insisted on taking guitar lessons. You wanted to learn proper fingerings and techniques, you'd said. Everything you knew from a million years ago was self-taught. If your playing were to progress, you insisted, you needed to start getting to know your instrument on a different level.

I honestly couldn't fathom the humility it took for the bass player of the world's biggest rock band to call up an instructor and very seriously say that he wanted to employ their services. I had no idea what it was like to admit I had a problem. I'd been running in the opposite direction for so long. On the other hand, I'd watched you ask for help countless times over the last 20 years - something you never would have done in your previous life. What a miracle of a man you are. I still couldn't get over it after all these years.

As I stood at the kitchen counter pouring myself a fresh glass of chilled water, I watched Ali talking with your son out on the veranda. He held his toy airplane up high, blue and red plastic gleaming in the fervid mid-day sun of the French Riviera. He was just barely five now, an age that seemed a lifetime ago and alternately like no time had passed since my boys were that young. I marveled at the man you had become in those ten years, and how much closer that had brought us and our families. I had so much more baggage I couldn't leave behind. Sometimes I wondered though, if I could, where we would end up.

The sound of an old tune drifted lazily in the open window. I listened to you play for a minute in solitude, your bluesy notes washing over my entire body. Most people didn't know you could play the guitar too. You were far better with it than I ever was, a fact that shamed me to admit and delighted me to behold at the same time. It made me want to curl up in your lap and become your guitar. I finished the last gulp of my water and, leaving it on the counter next to the sink, I went outside to find you.

 

Stopping at the threshold between the family room and the terrace, I pause for a moment to take in the sweeping views of the Mediterranean, which I find impossible not to do every time I'm here in this exact location. I spot you, hidden off to the side of the house, and I have to pull a chair over with me because you're practically sitting in the garden. You see me and stop in the middle of your song and I regret coming out here entirely. As I go, I tear up the grass some, and I try to pat it down with the toe of my sandals a bit once I get my chair in place next to you. I smile wanly in your direction as I sit down, feeling like I've spoiled not only the grass.

"What were you playing?" I attempt to act like I've not completely interrupted you and your concentration.

"Oh I don't know..." You wave your hand around like it's nothing. "I was just making it up."

I try not to let my incredulous feeling seep into my face. "You're kidding. You're telling me you were just..."

"Improvising." You nod as you look down at the acoustic in your hands.

"It sounded so old, like something from Memphis."

You look right at me and a long silence stretches out between us, making the air thicker by the second. I didn't mean to say that and I wish I could take it back instantly. We both know what happened in Memphis, and that's a story that will stay between the two of us.

I muscle through the moment, the only way I know how, "Ah, the Heartland, we'll be back there so soon..." I trail off as I look out toward Ali and your boy, who are now making their way down to the sand, completely blind to our presence in the bushes by the house.

"Jonah is getting so big," I say in the way mothers talk about their kids at the park. Or so I imagine.

"I think that every single time I see him," you say with a small sigh.

"It must be hard," I say as I run my hand through my hair that won't ever stay in place.

You prop your guitar gently against your chair and smooth out the wrinkles on your trousers with both hands. "You know how it is; we're gone so much anyway."

"You don't have to do that," I say, staring your eyes down until they find me.

"What?" Like you don't know what I mean, always like you don't already know.

"Pretend like it's the same. The stolen days away from my kids are always a choice."

I reach out and rest my hand on your knee. "It must be hard," I repeat reassuringly.

This time you say, "You don't have to do that," and you cover my hand with yours.

Sometimes I think you leave out your feelings to spare me. Because you don't want me to have to feel it with you. And you know I'd have no choice in that matter.

I unsanwich my hand and pick up the book of photography lying next to your chair. I'm not even sure why you have a book full of photos of space with you out here. It could just as easily have been a gift from Edge or Mariana. I flip through the Nasa photos, but keep being drawn back to the cover, which includes a repeating greyscale pattern of the phases of the moon.

"Did you know those aren't black and white photos?"

I look at you aporetically.

"The surface of the moon is actually grey," you continue, oblivious to my doubt, as you pick your guitar up and begin to strum something new and ethereal.

I put the book back down where I found it as I lean forward and ask, "What is that? It's so light."

"Something me and Edge have been working on. Something new. Something about the stars." You say between notes.

You're always surprising me. "Adam, I wish I could be your guitar. I'd let you play me every day of the week," I say, gazing up at you from the palms of my hands, unconsciously batting my heavy eyelashes. I scoot closer and walk my fingers playfully up your arm, "Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday...." My words turn to laughter as you smile and lean over your instrument to kiss me.

**Author's Note:**

> Important note: All my Bono/Adam fics take place in the same universe.
> 
> Full disclosure: I always thought Bono was saying "Jonah" as the boy's name in Mysterious Ways, but it is in fact Johnny. Anyway, I've always loved the imagery of Jonah better, so I just let myself go on hearing it that way. It's the name I'd choose for a son I'm never going to have, so I'm giving him to Adam. The name means "dove" and was the Biblical name of a Hebrew prophet famous for being thrown overboard in a storm and swallowed by a whale for disobeying God. Basically what happened in the Book of Jonah is that God tells Jonah to go east to Nineveh and tell them that God is going to destroy the Assyrian capital for their sinful ways. Jonah doesn't listen to God. He goes the other way toward Spain, and God punishes Jonah by sending a violent storm his way. When Jonah confesses to his fellow sailors that the rough seas are his fault, they throw him overboard. In desperation, in his darkest hour, Jonah asks God for help, and so he sends the whale to swallow him and keep him safe from the storm. He is then left unharmed on the shore three days later. God asks him again to go to Nineveh and he obeys. Some people say giving a child this name is bad luck because he doesn't listen and ends up in a dangerous situation, but I always thought it was a hopeful name that shows God's mercy and how there is always something to be learned, even in difficult situations in life. I also think it's appropriate that the meaning of the name as a dove evokes the Hebrew and Christian symbols of the dove as a human soul at peace. It's especially poetic when you think of it in the context of the song Mysterious Ways, where "Jonah"'s sister is "the moon." Some meanings for the name Alba are "bright, white, pearl, and dawn," so in summary this is how I came to give Alba a big brother named Jonah.
> 
> Of course I'm overthinking it, but it's still beautiful. <3


End file.
